Here’s an interesting notion: Telltale have put out a “stats” trailer for The Walking Dead: Episode Four, which details the choices folks made, making for a sort of post-mortem breakdown of people’s morality within the game. While I won’t explode any details here, it’s interesting that The Walking Dead players are by and large good guys. If you’ve played the game already, I think you will want to take a look to compare with your own choices.

It should go without saying that there are SERIOUS SPOILERS down there. Episode Five should shamble into the crosshairs of our morality math in a few weeks. (more…)

Oh, hm. Well boo. If you’ll remember, Lone Survivor maestro Jasper Byrne recently announced that he was leaving behind the cobweb-coated confines of survival-horror to enter a realm one part Dark Souls and one part Zelda. I quite enjoy both of those things, and Lone Survivor pushed all of my most precious of buttons in highly sensual ways. I was, then, quite excited about Byrne’s latest and (potentially) greatest. But now, I am markedly less excited, because it’s somewhat tough to get my hopes up for something that no longer exists.

Forced is a co-operative arena-based ARPG, currently around half-way toward a successful funding campaign on Kickstarter. Developers BetaDwarf sent me a demo of the game, which has been in development for almost two years. The first thing I noticed is that I shouldn’t really keep calling it an ARPG in the Katchup, since it’s more like a tactical action game than a roleplaying game. Then I realised I was going to have to involve a friend if I wanted to experience the game at its best, and so I did. Now I understand what Forced is and it’s not quite what the videos had led me to believe.>

Whaaaaaat! How is it possible for there to be another Mass Effect game? Surely everything was tied up and the game universe so profoundly changed by the conclusion(s) of ME3 that there’s simply no room for more? Unless there was somehow> some way to tweak and retcon a story that’s already built around ad-hoc pseduo-mythology, resurrections and space magic…. No, surely no such thing is possible. While we wait to see how Bioware take ME’s prophecy-blighted space opera to new places (I’m going to bet you play as a new character who encounters/searches for a long-lost Shepherd), what we do now know is that it’ll be departing its mucky-textured Unreal-based engine of yesteryear and moving to DICE’s impressive (and, thus far, very PC-sympathetic) Frostbite engine for the next instalment. (more…)

I had a choice of headlines for this – perhaps that Minecraft has become the ninth best-selling PC game of all time, that it has now shifted over 8 million paid copies in total or that Notch heralded that last with the cryptic phrase 69I960EHE0A4A0IVG0EHE02500R4R0G1T30PLJ00V6V0EHE0V1U01V10U5U0VGV0V4R. But I think you’ll agree, Minecraft outselling The Sims 2: Pets is the news we’re really here for. (more…)

It’s been a while since Microsoft pulled the ol’ ‘oh no, this new version of DirectX couldn’t possibly> work on earlier versions of Windows’ scamgasm, but as the relatively friendly age of Windows 7 is overshadowed by the dawning of the firm’s desperate desire to make Windows 8 a cross-platform goliath/software shop, an old habit has returned. The next version of DirectX might be a purely iterative one, but if you ever look a game that requires DirectX 11.1 you’ll be looking at a game that won’t run on Windows 7 or earlier. (more…)

Skyfall has becom the biggest-grossing, most heavily product-placed and most three-completely-different-films-mashed-together Bond movie of all time. Clearly then, the recently-released tie-in game must be a thoughtful, high-budget affair with a long development cycle and the upmost understanding of what makes Bond Bond. Clearly. 007 Legends essentially retells older Bold adventures but as starring Daniel ‘Mini-Hulk’ Craig and a raft of more modern technology. I knew in my bones that this would be a faithful and careful recreation of the cavalier Secret Agent fantasy, and definitely not a mucky, ugly, by the numbers first-person shooter whose PC version was less console port and more console diarrhea that had accidentally dribbled onto PC.

I put on my best (only) bowtie and went in. Here’s what I discovered in my first and only foray into 007 Legends. Would it leave me shaken or stirred lol zing etc? (more…)

Din’s Curse and Depths of Peril are my favourite ARPGs. When John wrote about the absolutely lovely Torchlight 2, among all the praise he had this to say: “It really makes no efforts to take the genre anywhere new.” It’s easy to come to the conclusion that there is> nowhere new for the genre to go, but Soldak are pioneers, exploring the possibilities of loot, clickity-clicking and character-building. The previous games have added emergent experiences, living worlds and consequences that have far more meaning and impact than steadily rising numbers. The studio’s latest is Drox Operative, currently in beta, and it involves spaceships and lasers. Think Space Rangers 2 as an ARPG. Then try the demo, and Din’s Curse while you’re at it.

BLOPPITY, BUMP, TSSSHHH, BEEE BLOOP. I used to be in a band, but looking back I don’t think my instrument was ever plugged in. My job was to stand on a stage and look moody. Perhaps my lack of ability goes some way toward explaining why I’m so excited whenever I find a game or toy that lets me make music just by clicking a button or two. Acid Defender is a brilliant browser-based music-making experiment and I haven’t listened to anything else this morning. BEEP, BLOOP, BEEPITY, TSSSHHH. Play it here. Via @jennatar.

D’awww! My cockles are forever warmed by communities keeping olden games alive, and so it is that an email declaring the latest release of a fan-made, Epic-permitted patch of the original Unreal brought about my first smile of this dingy day. OldUnreal’s Patch 227 has been kicking around in various forms since 2008, but yesterday brought the first update to it in over a year. (more…)